THE 


Cemperance Hattlenot stlan's but God's. 


I I 


Pere rT CAC) PU re Li SEE 


FOR THE 


Onstruction and Greouragement 


OF 


THE FRIENDS OF TEMPERANCE 


THROUGHOUT THE UNITED STATES, 


BY REV. JOHN MARSH, D.D., 


COR. SEC’Y OF THE AM. TEMP. UNION. 


‘The battle is not your’s but Gop’s.’’—2 Curon. xx. 19. 


MP ens Morb : 


AMERICAN TEMPERANCE UNION, No. 10 PARK BANK. 
1858. 


Go the Hriends of Gemperance. 


If the thought here presented shall impress, encourage and animate your 
hearts, as it has my own in our arduous conflict, I shall be abundantly rewarded 
for the labor of drawing it out, and sending it to you. May we hear the voice of 
Him who says to us, ‘‘ Be of good courage and play the man for yourselves and 


for the cities of our God.”’ 


J. P. PRALL, PRINTER BY STEAM, 9 SPRUCE-ST., N. Y. 


THE TEMPERANCE BATTLE. 


“The battle is not yours but God’s.’’-—2 Curonictes xx. 16. 


ry 


THERE was something fearful in that voice when Moses stood 
in the gate of the camp, and said, Who is on the Lord’s side ? 
let him come unto me. Rebellion had broken out. The people 
had said to Aaron, “ Up, make us gods which shall go before 
us; for, as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of 
the land of Egypt, we wot not what has become of him. And 
when Moses came down from the mount, and Joshua heard the 
noise of the people as they shouted, he said unto Moses, There 
is a noise of war in the camp. But Moses said, It is not the 
voice of them that shout for mastery, neither is it the voice of | 
them that cry for being overcome, but the noise of them that 
sing do I hear.” It was indeed the noise of revelry and mirth, 
and yet it was the noise of war ; of war against heaven ; and God, 
in his anger, ordered a separation of the precious from the vile ; 
and there fell of the people that day, about three thousand men. 
But there are other conflicts besides those in which God direct- 
ly takes vengeance on his enemies—conflicts between his people 
and their foes—which, from some peculiar circumstances, are 
often pre-eminently God’s. When the children of Ammon and 
Moab, and Mount Sier, came against Judah, from beyond the 
sea, Jchosaphat feared, and set himself to seek the Lord, and 
proclaimed a fast throughout all Judah ; and they cried might- 
ily unto the Lord for deliverance. Then upon Jehaziel, the son 
of Zechariah, came the Spirit of the Lord ; and he said, Hearken 
ye, all Judah, and ye inhabitants of Jerusalem, and thou King 
_Jehosaphat, thus saith the Lord unto you, “Be not afraid nor 


4 THE TEMPERANCE BATTLE. 


dismayed by reason of this great multitude ; for the battle is not 
yours but God’s.” Theirs it was primarily and actively. They 
were to fight and conquer, or die. But theirs it was not alone. 
Theirs it was not in all its great and ultimate bearings. Higher 
interests than theirs were at stake, even the interests of God 
and his universal government. Therefore, said the Lord by 
the prophet, “ Be not afraid nor dismayed by reason of this great 
multitude ; for the battle is not yours but God’s.” 

This most impressive truth admits of an application to all 
spiritual and moral conflicts—to conflicts with Atheism, and 
idolatry, with error, and oppression, and iniquity of every de- 
scription ; but I shall improve it, as I most justly may, in rela- 
tion to that great conflict with INTEMPERANCE, which, for the 
last thirty years, has been engaging, and is now engaging, the 
hearts and hands of thousands and millions. To all such, in 
antagonism to this great evil, I would say, THE BATTLE IS NOT 
yours But GoD’s. 

And yet, that | may not be misapprehended, and that none 
may be lulled into inaction, [ would first observe, Yours most 
rightly and properly it is. Yours, as bound to take care of 
your own bodies and souls, and keep them from the arts of the 
ereat destroyer ;—yours, as fathers and mothers, set to protect 
and rescue your children from the fangs of the monster ;— 
yours, as philanthropists called to have compassion on the 
weak and the suffering, to make sacrifices for the good of 
others, and to pull the victims of the cup out of the burning ;— 
yours, as patriots and citizens, who are to protect the community 
in which you live from corruption, violence, and crime ; from 
heart-rending cruelties, and awful catastrophes ;—yours, as 
Christians, endowed with the higher power of divine wisdom and 
influence to emancipate the church and reform the world. Ina 
word, yours it is as living in an age when the ravages of intem- 
perance are most deeply felt, and when it can be expelled only 
by your agency and instrumentality ;—yours, for God has made 
it such and will hold you responsible for the most vigorous and 
exterminating warfare. And yet, it is not yours. This is a 
paradox which the men of this world will not understand, and 
of which, perhaps, many of you are utterly ignorant. When 
you go forth in your own strength, or take to yourselves the 
glory of your achievement, it is manifest that you are. It is 


THE TEMPERANCE BATTLE. 5 


only when men go out of themselves, and look above, and 
around, and contemplate the vast interests in which they are 
concerned, and reflect on that INFINITE ONE with whose glory 
is connected, for good or for evil, all the actions of mortals, 
that they learn that human interests are as nothing, and that 
the great movements of men for the blessedness of the world, 
are not theirs, but God’s. 

Does the fool say in his heart, THERE 1s No Gop ?—Does 
he affirm that all the glorious mechanism of the Universe, from 
the sun that rolls in the heavens to the finest filament of an 
insect’s wing, comes from the fortuituous concourse of atoms, and 
that man is without a moral governor or guide? The men of 
God may resist him for his folly, and for the rescue of their own 
faith and hope; but the battle is not theirs, but God’s. And so 
if millions on millions of benighted Pagans bow down to gods 
of wood and stone; and missionaries of the cross, in love and 
compassion, leave father, and mother, and houses, and lands, and 
eo forth to contend with inhuman rites and horrid superstitions, 
and perhaps lay down their lives in the conflict, the battle is not 
theirs, but God’s. And if truth is banished from among men, 
and error, dark and damning, sits brooding over the nations, 
or walks abroad as an angel of light ; and men, enlightened from 
above, stand forth the exponents and defenders of stern realities, 
the battle is not theirs, but God’s; for he is the God of truth, 
and no lie may be permitted in his vast dominions. And so, 
from every stand-point you can take, whether as individuals, 
as parents, teachers, philanthropists, patriots, Christians, the 
temperance battle is yours ;——but so much higher interests are 
involved, that yours are lost or swallowed up in them. THE 
BATTLE IS NOT YouRS BUT GOD’s. 

Do you ask for the proof? It requires no proof. I should 
as soon think of offering proof that God exists, or that he 
is possessed of the attributes of God. It must be so. It can- 
not be otherwise. T’o say that God is the friend and not the 
enemy of Intemperance, or that he is in any way indifferent to 
this great conflict, would be the greatest of absurdities ; not to 
say, blasphemy itself. 

Such an evil—so destructive to man’s best interests for time 
and eternity—so mocking God in his exquisite workmanship of 
the human frame, turning it into a bloated, staggering, loath- 


6 THE TEMPERANCE BATTLE. 


some thing, and bringing it by thousands and millions to a 
dishonored grave—so wasting God’s property, food enough to 
feed an empire, and treasure enough in fifty years to fill the 
world with Bibles, and ministers, and churches—so at war with 
the Bible, and the Sabbath, and the Spirit engendering 
pollution, blasphemy, contention, violence, suicides, murders— 
blasting revivals, polluting churches, degrading ministers at 
the altar, going before the missionary of the cross to the 
heathen and making them ten-fold more inacessible and more 
the children of hell than before—such an evil, pervading the 
high and the low, the rich and the poor, entering the councils 
of nations, and the temples of Jehovah—never ceasing, never 
ending, no stop in the circuit of those horrid wheels which 
mangle and crush human bodies without number, and no cessa- 
tion in its more dark and terrific work of ruin to the soul—a 
work which “has ‘sent into perdition more men and women than 
that deluge which swept over the highest hill tops, engulfing a 
world, in which cight only were saved’—such an evil, a volun- 
tary outbreak of the wicked heart against all the physical and 
moral laws of his kingdom, God must hate and oppose, or he 
could not be God. | 

The drunkenness of Noah, and Lot, and Dathan, and 
Abiram, and Nabal, and Ephraim, and Benhadab, and Belshaz- 
zar, With his royal guests, drinking wine out of the stolen 
vessels of the Lord, were the abhorrence of his soul. Warning 
after warning did he give his people against this body and soul 
destroying sin, with all its causesand accompaniments. ‘ Woe 
unto them that rise up early in the morning, that they may follow 
strong drink, till wine inflame them.” Woe here, and-woe 
hereafter ; for “no drunkard hath any inheritance in the kingdom 
of God.” All the accessories of drunkenness—fashion, custom, 
hospitality, gain—no matter what they may be--are, with him, 
participants in guilt. “ Woe unto him that giveth his neighbor 
drink ; that puttest thy bottle to him, and makest him drunken 
also. Drink thou also. The cup of the Lord’s right hand shall 
be turned unto thee, and shameful spewing shall be on. thy 
glory.” Against the traffic, causing drunkenness, robbing the 
poor when it catches him in its net, hear the thunder of his 
wrath : “ Woe to him that coveteth an evil covetousness to his 
house, that he may set his nest on high; that he (being rich) 


THE TEMPERANCE BATTLE. 7 


may be delivered from the power of evil. Thou hast consulted 
shame to thy house by cutting off many people, and hast sinned 
against thy soul. For the stone shall cry out of the wall, and 
the beam out of the timber shall answer it. Woe to him that 
buildeth a town with blood, and establisheth a city by iniquity.” 

Intemperance contests God’s right to everything which he 
has made ; to the body, with all its wonderful workmanship ; 
to the mind, his own bright image; to the heart, made to love 
and fear him; to the immortal soul, which Christ hath pur- 
chased with his own blood ; to the Sabbath, as God’s day, set 
apart for his glory ; to the fruits and grains which he has 
prepared for man, for beast, and for the fowls of heaven ; to the 
earth itself, as his rest, where “he will dwell with men, and 
they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, 
and be their God, and where God shall wipe away all tears 
from their eyes.” Such a time as millennium, Intemperance 
says, shall never come. I will destroy the beautiful body, and 
send it to an untimely grave ; I will dethrone reason ; I will 
take away the heart ; I will break up family peace and domestic 
happiness ; I will extract from the grains and the fruits of 
heayen a drink which shall turn man into a fiend, and earth 
into a field of blood; I will make the Sabbath the day of my 
triumphs ; I will snatch souls from the arms of Jesus Christ and 
turn them into hell. arth, with all its promised blessings of 
peace and boundless joy, shall be the everlasting abode of 
drunkenness, madness, despair, and death. Is it any wonder 
that the battle should be God’s battle ? 

His providence has ever shown with an awful emphasis 
that it is his battle. His providence is his law, in its results 
—not always visible at first-—sometimes full of mystery. Dis- 
tillers, and brewers, and importers, and venders often roll in 
wealth and luxury, which they have gained in the slaughter of 
thousands. ‘“ Pride compasseth them about asa chain. Vio- 
lence covereth them as a garment. ‘They are not in trouble, as 
other men are; neither are they plagued like other men. 
Their eyes stand out with fatness, and they have more than 
heart could wish. They set their mouth against the heavens 
and their tongue walketh through the earth.” God’s people 
contemplate them with wonder, and “ waters of a full cup are 
wrung out to them.” But the end is not to-day, nor to-morrow. 


8 THE TEMPERANCE BATTLE. 


Follow them to the death-bed scene. Read their history ; the 
history of their sons; the history of their estates. Into what 
snares does God often suffer them to fall! If not drunkards 
themselves, cursed with drunken sons, or by daughters torn, and 
scathed, and peeled by drunken husbands ; or perhaps themselves 
harrassed, reproached, tormented by the victims of their cup, 
living, dying, or gone to judgment. Enter that once magnifi- 
cent and beautiful dwelling. There was once all that could 
make life desirable ; wealth, beauty, intelligence, love ; but the 
wine cup was there. It was the pride of the house. Richstores 
were in the cellar. Guests flocked thither to become partici- 
pants in the joy. Warning and admonition weregiven. ‘“ Who 
hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath wounds? who hath 
redness of eyes? They that tarry long at the wine,’ was 
sounded in their ears. But they heeded not. They drank, 
they laughed, they mocked. But the poison didits work. The 
husband and father went down to the grave, an idiot sot. One 
son after another died a drunkard ; and poverty and contempt 
were the portion of the more innocent ones. Of how many a 
family it has been the history, none can tell. 

very poor-house, every mad-house, every penitentiar y, and 
house of correction, filled with the degraded and the ruined, is 
the stamp of the Almighty upon this vice and its inhuman traffic. 
Neighborhoods, and States, and Kingdoms that have given 
their strength to the manufacture and sale of intoxicating drinks, 
and who have said, “ By this eraft we have our wealth,” have 
been cursed in all their borders with poverty and crime. 
Look at France, with its millions of acres devoted to the culture 
of the vine; look at England, Scotland, and Ireland, with their 
mammoth distilleries and breweries, destroying breadstufis 
enough to feed millions a day ; look, too at our own country 
where have been poured forth rivers of the fiery poison, and 
how has the curse everywhere prevailed! ‘“ With what measure 
you mete, it shall be measured to you again.” “ They that sow 
to the wind, shall reap the whirlwind.” Sixty thousand 
drunkards in Great Britain and forty thousand in America 
form an annual procession to the grave, and the mourners 20 
about the streets in rags, and shame, and woe. The distiller 
has rolled up wealth, but God has not suffered him to enjoy it. 
The importer and vender have rolled up wealth, but God has 


THE TEMPERANCE BATTLE 9 


not suffered them to enjoy it. They have howled upon their 
beds in anguish and in fear of an hereafter. Every license 
given has brought a curse upon the State. Broils and murders 
have been fearfully engendered. Around the dram shop have 
risen an ungodly generation, to lie, and curse ; to defraud, and 
blaspheme ; to despise the Sabbath, and prepare for hell. A 
drunken son has brought a distiller’s grey hairs with sorrow to 
the grave ; and a drunken wife has lain in the bosom of the 
vender, only to tear out his heart-strings. Terrible have been 
the dealings of Providence in this warfare, as whole families, 
father, mother, sons, and daughters have filled drunkards’ 
graves ; and asa nation ora State, licensing the curse, has been 
deprived of the brightest of its youth, and the noblest of its 
statesmen. 

If we have need of further illustration of the truth that the 
_ battle is God’s battle, we have it in the wonderful success which 
in the last twenty years, has attended it. Not with more con- 
tempt did Goliath look down upon David with his sling and 
stone, than did the army of distillers and brewers, of venders 
and consumers, upon the. feeble band which commenced the con- 
flict. ven men of enlarged minds and sober thought, viewed 
it as a hopeless effort to change the habits of a nation, to save 
the drunkard and break up the richest traffic. But behold the 
result! A, nation born in a day : not by might, nor by power, 
but by weapons from God’s armory, light and truth, stripping 
off the damning delusion, and unyeiling and bringing to light 
the horrors of the traffic. Farms, factories, workshops, ship- 
yards, social circles, the habitations of the moral and religious, 
thousands and tens of thousands who travel on the land and the 
sea, redeemed from the temptation and the curse; the church 
and the ministry relieved from their worst foe. The very 
drunkards of the land, given up in despair, at one period by 
thousands and tens of thousands, burst their chains, and sprang 
into liberty. And distant nations have mingled in the triumphs. 
It has been all of God, who hath here marvelously “ chosen the 
foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and the weak 
things of the world, to confound the things which are mighty, 
and base things of the world, and things which are despised, to 
bring to nought things that are,” that men may know that it is 
his work. 


10 THE TEMPERANCE BATTLE. 


And when the advocates and professed supporters of the 
cause have, at any time, forgotten or forsaken God, and refused 
to recognize him in prayer and in any of their efforts, they have 
at once most signally failed. Neither God nor his people would ' 
sustain them. Every successful movement in this ereat conflict, 
from its commencement to the present hour, has shown that it 
is not man’s work, but God’s. What hath God wrought! has 
been the exclamation of every reflecting mind. And every 
defeat has come not from God’s power, but from the combina- 
tions and designs of wicked men. And is it any wonder, I 
again ask, that it is God’s battle? Intemperance is the great 
enemy of God and his Son. God must oppose it and will 
oppose it, though earth and hell are arrayed for its support. 
You may be on the Lord’s side, and help on the mighty conflict, 
but THE BATTLE IS NOT YOURS BUT GoD’s. 

And now I desire to lead you to some improvement of this. 
subject, and to make some suitable reflections. 


And first, if the battle is noty ours but God’s, then, as those 
engaged in it, you have no reason to be ashamed. Many would 
feel ashamed of being engaged in this great conflict. They 
could not endure the jeer of the luxurious and refined; the 
proud man’s contumely ; the scorn of the delicate lady ; rejec- 
tion from the wine party and the social circle. Polished fami- 
lies have denied that they had any sympathy with the move- 
ment. Ministers, in rich congregations, have shrunk from 
naming it in the pulpit; and men who have gloried in being 
recognized as presidents and directors of large and rich philan- 
thropic institutions, have refused. all enrolment in this war. 
But to whom belongs shame—to those who are with God, or to 
those who are against him? To whom belongs shame—to those 
who are arresting and turning back the tide of sorrow and woe, 
and saving souls from death, or to men and women who add 
fuel to the fire, which destroys the fairest works of God? Oh 
thou bleeding Lamb of God! who didst humble thyself and 
become obedient unto death, even the death of the cross, despis- 
ing the shame, forgive us that we have ever blushed when bat- 
tling in thy cause; or that we have not counted it our highest 


glory to gather up the lowest outcasts, chosen of thee to be jewels 
in thy crown. 


THE TEMPERANCE BATTLE. 11 


2. If the battle is not yours but God’s, then you may leave 
all your adversaries to settle their controversies with him. 

Many complain of you as interfering with their business, 
their habits, and their pleasures. May we not, say they, do as 
we will with our own ; are we not our own masters ; may we 
not eat, and drink, and buy, and sell as we please? All inter- 
ference is unwarranted and insulting. This is a land of liberty 
and of protection of rights, and who are ye to judgeus? But it 
isnot you that interfere and judge, but God. He makes war 
upon them—their business, their habits, their pleasures. He 
says, “ Wo unto them that rise up early that they may follow 
strong drink, till wine inflame them.” He says, “ Woe unto 
him that putteth the bottle to his neighbor’s lips, and makest 
him drunken ;” and while you pity them in their delusion and 
do all you can to save them and their offspring, you may leave 
_ them to settle all their controversies with him. The battle is 
not yours but God’s. 


3. If the. battle is not yours but God’s, then be not dis- 
mayed by reason of a great multitude of foes, nor fearful of 
final results. | 

What if these foes are mighty ; what if interests opposed are 
vast, reproaches deep, and passions violent; what if kings and 
rulers, and judges, and all the powers of darkness are allied 
against you; who is this great Leviathan that you should fear? 
What if he has millions of treasure at his control, and his for- 
tresses and strongholds are without number; and what if he 
cuts down forty thousand victims year by year ; “ Hearken ye, 
all Judah and ye inhabitants of Jerusalem, and thou king 
Jehosaphat, Thus saith the Lord unto you, Be not afraid nor 
discouraged by reason of this great multitude, for the battle is 
not yours but God’s.”. We measure not our swords with this 
terrible foe alone. God iswithus. We are fighting his battle. 
All the great. principles of his physical and moral government 
sustain us. He is the protector of the weak, the helper of 
the suffering. He enlightens the minds, and moves the com- 
passion, and bows the wills of men. He thwarts the counsels 
of enemies; and makes all the engines of evil, the very manu- 
factories of drunkenness, the distilleries and drinking houses of 
the land, plead powerfully for their own destruction. Every 


’ 


12 THE TEMPERANCE BATTLE. 


rum murder has a tongue more eloquent than man. LEvery 
drunkard, dying of his delirium tremens, crying out before his 
time, “ The fires of hell are in my bosom; I am surrounded by 
serpents and devils damned ; I am lost, lost, for ever lost!” 
strikes terror into the hearts af the people. The old nations’ 
Hegypt, and Greece, and Rome, had no power to overthrow vice. 
Their very religion was baptized in pollution, and priest and 
philosopher loved it ; so that, in the midst of their intelligence 
and splendor they sank in their corruption and miserably per- 
ished. But we have the gospel—a mighty lever, by which God 
lifts up the nations. That fills the soul with an abborrence of 
the wrong; with pity for the suffering ; with a spirit of self- 
sacrifice for the good of others; and a zeal for conquest which 
can never be subdued. Through this great power, the power of 
the cross, united to the authority of his law, and the terrors of 
his providence, and a judgment to come, God Almighty will 
conquer. It cannot be that this world, on which he has set his 
affection, for which Christ died, should forever be given up to 
this vile sin; that God’s sabbath shall forever be desecrated by 
this unholy traffic ; that men made for honor, glory, and immor- 
tality, shall forever be thus dragged down through drunkenness 
to perdition. 

Let the unbelieving, and the faint-hearted, and those who 
cringe before the violence of wicked men, say, It is impossible. 
Who is unmindful of the past? Who can forget that great 
wave of mercy which rolled over the Emerald Isle in the days 
of Father Mathew? Who, that mighty movement which, in 
1840-1, stirred every fibre of love and compassion, bearing 
thousands and tens of thousands of miserable inebriates to the 
Home of the free? Every city, town,and village was then moved. 
Fathers brought their sons, wives their husbands, sisters their 
brothers, to sign the pledge. Platoon after pas rough and 

ragged, pressed on for deliverance. 
‘They came like the winds, when forests are rended ; 
They came like the waves, when navies are stranded.” 
“Their wives and children standing by, 
Sent forth the shout of victory.” 

Another is coming. I see it in the distance. The prepar- 
ation is plain. J know not what holds it back. Ten thousand 
slain from under the altar ery, “ Oh, Lord, how long?” But 


THE TEMPERANCE BATTLE. | 12 


it will be a tornado of wrath. When God shall let loose the 
winds, and the people shall rise in mass and demand the extinc- 
tion of the traffic, it will be done. The very distillers and 
venders will ery to the rocks and the mountains to fall on 
them, and hide them from an indignant world. Legislatures 
will everywhere be as ready to enact prohibitory laws, as they 
now are to license the accursed traffic ; and as universal will be 
their enforcement, as is that of the laws against counterfeiting 
or murder. Men may not believe it. But who can limit the 
Almighty? Who can comprehend his power to enlighten the 
minds and sway the hearts of men? If God be for us, whom 
should we fear? Who, successfully, can be against us? 


4, If the battle is not yours but God’s, then it may 
reasonably be expected that all the professed people of God 
will be foremost in the fight. 

They are his soldiers ; enlisted to fight his battles, and all 
his battles. They may not choose some, and neglect others. 
They may not say, “ Here, in the name of our God, will we set 
up our banners,” but there will we stand neutral. If the battle 
with Intemperance is God’s battle, then he has a right here to 
the service of every Christian ; to the service of every minister ; 
to the service of every pulpit; and to the service of every 
Christian press. None may excuse themselves from the con- 
flict, saying, Temperance is not religion ; it is a mere dietetic 
or sanitary concern ; a secular and political conflict ; it con- 
cerns the outer, and not the inner man ; the body, and not the 
soul ; it belongs to the week-day, and not to the Sabbath ; to 
the public hall, and not to the consecrated sanctuary. None 
may stand aloof because the battle may be directed by wicked 
men who know not God, and acknowledge neither his authority 
nor his providence; ncr because it is conducted in a manner 
inconsistent with Christian character and at variance with 
Christian taste. Nor may any plead that they have higher 
interests at stake, or that this will bring them into conflict 
with men whose wealth is needed for the support of the church. 
Ir 1s Gop’s BATTLE, and God will hold them to it and to its 
right direction. 

“Tf,” said that great and noble warrior who first stormed 
the battlements of Alcohol, Dr. Justin Edwards, “if Satan 


14 THE TEMPERANCE BATTLE. 


can cause jit to be believed that this is a mere secular 
concern, and those who manufacture, sell, and use the wea- 
pons of his warfare do not hear of their sins on the Sabbath, 
when God speaks to the conscience; or be entreated from the 
pulpit, his merey-seat, by the tears and blood of a Saviour, 
to flee from coming damnation, the adversary will keep pos- 
session of his stronghold. Church members will garrison it, 
and provision it, and fight for him. From the communion 
table, he will muster recruits, and find officers in those who 
distribute the elements, to fight his battles, perpetuate his 
warfare, and people, with increasing numbers, his dark domains 
to the end of time. If we may not, in this warfare, fight on the 
Lord’s day, when he himself goes forth to the battle, and com- 
mands in the field ;—if we may not use his weapons forged in 
heaven, and, from the high places of his erection, pour them 
down, thick, heavy, and hot upon the enemy, we may fight till 
we die, and he will esteem our iron as straw, and our brass as 
rotten wood ; our darts he will count as stubble, and laugh at 
the glittering of our spear. There is no coping with this 
enemy, but with weapons of heavenly temper, from the armory 
of Jehovah, on the day when he goes forth, and creation, at his 
command, stands still to witness the conflict. Then it is as 
conscience, kindled from above, blazes and thunders in the 
heart of the enemy, that he is consumed by the breath of the 
Almighty, and destroyed by the brightness of his coming.” 

But why should we thus speak, when such momentous inte- 
rests are at stake? What opponent is there like Intemperance 
to the conviction and conversion of sinners, and the speedy estab- 
lishment of Christ’s kingdom among men? What so desecrates. 
the Sabbath, vitiates youth, causes men to flout at God, and 
Christ, and Heaven, hinders missions, and turns souls by 
thousands into hell? Enter the habitation of the drunkard ; 
and, in half an hour, you may witness a violation of every com- 
imandment of the decalogue. He abjures God, is an idolater, 
a blasphemer, disobedient to parents, a murderer of himself and 
his children, Oh, how obscene! a thief, a slanderer, a coveter of 
what others possess, and worse than an infidel, makes no pro- 
vision for his own. Does his Heavenly Father say to him, in 
infinite compassion, ‘My son, give me thine heart,” the lost 
wretch cries, “‘ Give me rum.” Does the blessed Saviour stand 


THE TEMPERANCE BATTLE. 15 


knocking at his door; he, angry at his importunity, cries out, 
“ Away with him ; crucify him!” Does the Spirit of grace, find- 
ing him poor, and blind, and naked, and destitute, and in want of 
all things, whisper to his soul, ‘“‘ Repent, and have heaven ?” he 
rushes to the drink, that, in the Lethean waters, he may drown 
all reflection. And with five hundred thousand such in our 
land, going down to death, has the Church no interest in this 
battle? With intemperance standing in the way of the pro- 
gress of Christianity around the world and the glories of 
millennium, has the Church nothing to do in this matter? 
May the ministry hold their peace; aye, drink with the drunken, 
and countenance, by their presence, the Bacchanalian festival, 
and be innocent? Oh, that terrible maledietion! let it be 
feared, “ Curse ye Meroz ; curse ye bitterly ; for they came not 
to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the 
mighty.” But we are called not so much to warn or to chide, 
as to bless. From our American Zion have gone forth our 
noblest warriors. The names of Beecher, and Hewitt, and 
Hdwards, and Humphrey, and hundreds of others will go down 
to posterity with sweetest fragrance. Our churches have been 
our strongholds when everything else has fallen. And every 
Home missionary, and every missionary in the foreign field, has 
been a valiant soldier in the outskirts of the camp where the 
enemy has early entrenched himself, or commenced dragging the 
poor Pagans by millions to the pit. For this we bless our 
God. So let Zion be valiant, and the world will be saved. 


5. If the battle with Intemperance is God’s battle, then pro- 
hibition and not license of the traffic, its great source, is the true 
principle of legislation. 

_ Civil government is an ordinance of God, established for his 
glory, and for the good of men. Rulers stand in the place of 
God. “By me kings reign, and princes decree justice.” And 
that they may meet their high responsibilities, they need be men 
of self-denial and self-control. “It is not,” said the wise man, 
“for kings to drink wine, nor for princes strong drink, lest they 
drink and forget the law, and pervert the judgment of any of the 
afflicted.” And in all acts of legislation they must be on the 
Lord’s side—resisting all evil, protecting the people from evil 
doers, and sustaining the principles of God’s moral government. 


16 THE TEMPERANCE BATTLE. 


In all his conflicts with evil, the Governor of the Universe 
never gives license ;—no, not for an hour. It is always PRout- 
pitioN, Pronipirion. “ Thoushalt dono murder. ‘Thou shalt 
not steal. Thou shalt not bear false-witness.” ‘To license an 
evil doer, is to protect the criminal and not the victim. The 
licensed vender selling poison to hissweak brother and bring- 
ing him to the drunkard’s grave, is the criminal protected by 
the State; and the cries of the broken-hearted victim and his 
beggared family will go up, and not in vain, into the ears of 
the Lord of Sabaoth. 

Political expediency, a belief that a little gained is better 
than nothing, and the demands of men who cry, “ By this 
craft we have our wealth,” may plead for some compromise with 
the traffic ; but with the entire license system, God’s warriors 
can have no fellowship. It may hold out the promise of regulat- 
ing an acknowledged evil, but it upholds and honors that evil. 
It takes away responsibility and a sense of guilt. All its accom- 
panying pledges of prohibition on election and other days, are 
idle. It commissions death with hell following, to go forth and 
kill and destroy ; and it will be the wonder of coming generations 
that a Christian Legislature should ever enact a license law, and 
that a Christian governor should ever give it his sanction. The 
mere selfish total abstainer who declaims against law, says, I 
will destroy the traffic by withholding my patronage ; while 
there the fortress stands, scattering arrows, firebrands, and 
death. What cares the enemy for his patronage, while he can 
entice and make drunkards of his children! The abstinence 
of four millions of abstainers from the grogshops, does but 
little to diminish their number. The extreme moral guasionist 
says, Moral suasion will do the work, and the distiller and 
vender must be reasoned out of their business. What care they 
for his reasoning? Nothing ; while he discards and casts con- 
tempt on civil government, the greatest and most glorious ordi- 
nance of God for the peace, the order, and redemption of the 
world. 

Law there is in heaven, and law there must be on earth ; but 
law based on the eternal principles of right. .Nothing may be 
allowed by a human government which is not by the divine ; 
having love for its basis, and a principle of love vitalizing every 
department. “Love worketh no ill to his neighbor ; therefore 


THE TEMPERANCE BATTLE. 17 


love is the fulfilling of the law.” And hence, actuated, as we 
believe and trust, by this noble principle, and seeking protec- 
tion for the people, in answer to their demands, our Legislatures 
have cast aside License and enacted Prohibition. They have 
met with storms of wrath from all who would uphold Intem- 
perance ; from all who would make money on the ruin of their 
fellow-men ; from all who drink wine in bowls and care not 
for the affliction of Joseph ; from all who would make political 
capital out of the debased appetites and passions of the com- 
munity ; and their action has even been overthrown, as conflict- 
ing not with the eternal principles of right, but with legal tech- 
nicalities or constitutions of State. But in such legislation 
they have been on God’s side, and God’s helpers in the great 
battle. And whom have they to fear? Or of what should 
they be ashamed? Oh, I love to remember the outburst of a 
noble patriot and Christian to the State that dared first of all 
take a stand for the right and overturn “the throne of ini- 
quity, established by law.” Let it forever adorn the pages of 
humanity. “Pxopte or Maine. The God of heaven bless you 
for achieving such a victory. You have followed the most 
adroit conqueror the worid has ever seen. You have steered 
for the capitol itself, with all its magazines and materiel of war. 
You combat with the body of death and sin itself. When 
mighty conquerors and crafty politicians shall be forgotten, the 
laurels on your brows will be freshening and blooming with a 
beauty and glory which will be immortal.” * 

And in view of the blessed results of that legislation, its 
amazing diminution, almost instantaneously, of drunkenness, pau- 
perism, madness, and crime, we say, Shame on any people who 
uphold not their government in it; who fail of causing such 
laws to be executed ; who have a price put into their hands to 
get wisdom and redemption, but have no heart for it.. Shame 
on a State which, having once extended protection to the victim, 
and proclaimed deliverance to ten thousand suffering families, 
reverses its acts and goes back to the protection by license of 
the heartless criminal. 

The progress of the right may be slow, but itis sure. An age 
of advance in all sciences and arts which meliorate the condi- 


* Professor Moses Stuart. 


i) 


18 THE TEMPERANCE BATTLE. 


tion of man, will not discard a principle of government that will 
do more to relieve the world of pauperism, violence, and crime, 
than all.acts of regulation which have ever been adopted. The 
last may be first. Britain, though feeling that her immense 
revenue from the licensed traffic may be essential to her life, 
may be the first, under the instruction of God’s truth, to throw 
it all to the winds, and adopt the right principle—the principle 
of prohibition. One of the first nobles of the nation has termed 
the liquor traffic “the cancer of the State, which must be cut out 
by the knife ;’ and when the good Queen shall ask, as she one 
day will, in the spirit of earnest inquiry, “Is it right to license 
a traffic which turns 600,000 of my subjects into brutes and 
fiends, and sends 60,000 annually to drunkards’ graves,” who 
can doubt what her answer will be? Be instructed, O States 
of America! God has a controversy with the desolating traf- 
fic ; a controversy with every voter who, at the ballot-box sus- 
tains it; with every legislator who makes laws for its protec- 
tion : with every magistrate and citizen who fails in his duty to 
‘proscribe and abolish it. “If ye be with him, he will be with 
you,’.and grant you a blessed deliverance in all your borders ; 
but if ye fight against him, he will fight against you, and your 
land shall be a desolation and a curse. 


6. If the battle is not yours but God’s, then they who expect 
it will die with you will be greatly mistaken. 

When those who cried out, “ These men that have turned 
the world upside down have come hither also,” expected, by 
their expulsion and death, to put an end to Christ and his 
kingdom, they were destined to disappointment. And so it 
has been with all the Neros, and Caligulas, and Charleses, 
and upholders of slavery and the traffic in intoxicating drinks. 
Once and again has the shout gone up from the enemy’s camp, 
“The battle is over ; the cause of temperance is dead.” When 
the first pledge had done its work, and, in the use of vinous and 
fermented drinks, moderate drinkers were satisfied, and reformed 
men went back by hundreds to ruin, the ery rang through the 
land, “ The cause is dead ; temperance is a failure.” When that 
whirlwind of mercy, of which we have spoken, had purified all 
the low dens of drunkenness, and brought to their feet, by 
almost a miracle, an army of besotted men, and no more was, to 


THE TEMPERANCE BATTLE. 19 


human view, at once to be effected, again it was said, “'The 
cause is dead.” And when the Prohibitory Law of the State of 
New York was overthrown by that unparalleled decision of 
the Court of Appeals, three judges dissenting, a shout of vic 
tory went up from every dramshop, tavern bar, and distillery, 
and from all the dark regions of the pit ; and again we hear the 
echo around the world, the Maine Law is dead. But it is Gop’s 
BATTLE ; and though it is in the hands of feeble men and earth 
and hell are combined against it ; though there is occasionally 
discomfiture and defeat, and good men grow weary, and warriors 
die in the field, yet God lives; and through all time God’s 
Bible will proclaim a woe against drunkards and drunkard 
makers, and God’s providence will be against all the men and 
women who shall uphold in the world this terrible evil. Rejoice 
not ye who contend with God inthis matter. He is neither 
faint nor weary. Fear not ye who have done your duty and 
are passing away. God will raise up another generation who 
will be valiant in the fight. But it is for you to train them for 
the battle ; to teach your children in the house and by the way, 
in the Sabbath school and day school, all the principles of 
this great conflict ;—for you to bring them, as did the father of 
Hannibal his son to the altar, and cause them to swear eternal 
enmity to this great destroyer. 


T. If the battle with intemperance is God’s battle, then you 
ought to support it with your wealth. 

The silver and the gold is the Lord’s ; made by him, and for 
his glory ; but silver, gold, flocks, herds, fruit, grain, the 
magnificent mansion, stocks, securities, labor, skill, all that 
God has loaned to man for his comfort, Intemperance, where 

-itrages, engulfs it all. Nothing is left to the poor drunkard 
of all that his Heavenly Father had given him. An hundred 
millions have been annually wasted in this land on intempe- 
rance ; and when God has risen in his wrath and indignation, 
and his compassion too, and excited his friends to come to his help 
and battle this foe, no amount of money wanted in its defence has 
been withheld. Thousands on thousands have been subscribed 
to delude the people, defend the prosecuted vender, fee lawyers, 
bribe Legislators and Jurors, and perpetuate the curse. But, 

on the other hand, how few have given liberally to aid God in 


20 THE TEMPERANCE BATTLE. 


the conflict! How few of our men of wealth (but here and there 
one) have made donations worthy of the cause! How many of 
large estates, and giving tens of thousands in their wills to other 
benevolent enterprises, have made no mention of this! And how 
few of the churches have ever embraced it in their annual col- 
lections, as having any connection with the great interests of 
God’s kingdom. Not a tithe of the money saved to the temper- 
ance community by this cause, has ever been brought to its 
extension. And hence the battle has been conducted amid the 
greatest embarrassments. Lecturers have retired in want. 
The press has been stopped. Societies in debt have been 
disbanded. And only faith that God would, in some way, 
_ take care of his own, if man in his penuriousness did not, has 
upheld us in the conflict. The impression that temperance 
was a work of faith and labor of love, and needed little 
or no pecuniary aid, has been most delusive and destructive. 
While it has been peculiarly a work of the masses in the popu- 
lar meeting, the great results, where money has been freely 
given and documents freely scattered, and truth perseveringly 
sustained show that, were means furnished in proportion to 
the greatness and importance of the conflict, we should soon see 
the monster evil tottering to its base, and wealth saved to the 
nation of which we have faint conceptions. Is penuriousness 
either wise or right in this matter? No, friends; come with | 
your wealth to the help of the Lord against the mighty. An 
obligation rests upon you which you cannot throw off and be 
guiltless. Oh the folly of building vast jails, and poorhouses, 
and asylums for the victims of the cup, and giving nothing to 
aid in delivering the land from the curse. : 


8. If the battle is not yours but God’s, then you know to 
whom to look for aid ;—to look in childlike, humble, fervent, 
effectual prayer. “The Lord of Hosts is with us ; the God of 
Jacob is our refuge.” And what is more, we know to whom to 
give all the glory of success. ‘Not unto us, not unto us, but 
to thy name, O Lord, be all the glory.” But not to dwell on 
this, a theme for eternity, 

I must close, beloved friends, with a rebuke and an exhorta- 
tion. A rebuke. If the battle is not yours but God’s, then 


THE TEMPERANCE BATTLE. 21 


how shameful, how wicked all lukewarmness and yielding up of 
this great conflict. 

God, the mighty God, is moving heaven and earth to subdue 
this his greatest foe, and to save millions of souls from per- 
dition. Interests are at stake of which a Newton or a Gabriel 
could have no conceptions. Harth is to be delivered from two- 
thirds of its poverty and insanity, its cruelties and casualties, 
and heaven to be filled with ransomed ones ; and yet, because of 
‘the labor and the cost, perhaps the ridicule, the reproach, we 
yield the conflict, and settle down in apathy and repose, almost 
forgetting that there is a foe to be vanquished. Oh, is this our 
zeal, our love, our gratitude? Is this because the battle is not 
yours, but God’s? Will you throw it all upon him to finish it? 
Will you weary God with a sluggishness which, in any worldly 
enterprise, would bring you to poverty and rags? Oh, look at 
that rumseller or distiller in your very neighborhood, dragging 
perhaps your own sons down to death, and be humbled and 
confounded. Yes, look ; and take up, as you well may, the bit- 
ter lamentation of the venerable Cotton Mather, “ O my soul, thy 
Maker and thy Saviour, so worthy of thy love, a Lord whose in- 
finite goodness will follow all thou doest for him with remunera- 
tions beyond all conception glorious, how little, how little is it 
that thou doest for him ; at the same time look into thy neigh- 
borhood,; see there, a monster of wickedness will serve a master 
that will prove a destroyer to him, and whose wages will be 
death ; he stwdies how to serve the devil ; he is never weary of 
his drudgery ; he racks his invention to go through with it. 
Ah! he shames me ; he shames me wonderfully. O, my God, 
I blush and am ashamed to lift up my face to thee, my God.” 

And yet you say, “It is vain to serve God. We have done 
all we can. All hands hang down. All hearts faint. Our enemy, 
once quailing, has again come forth, haughty, overbearing, 
cruel. His footsteps are deep in human gore; while fashion, 
appetite, interest, and more than all, political craft and power, 
are leagued for his support.” And what if itis all so ; and there 
are adverses and dark days, and, to you, humiliating triumphs? 
THE BATTLE IS NOT youRS BuT Gop’s. Opposition we should 
pity more than fear. Excuses and apologies men may make for 
worshipping in the temple of Bacchus ;—bow down to fashion and 


22 THE TEMPERANCE BATTLE. 


appetite they may ; roll up riches and gain political power they 
may ; mock atall the teachings of God’s providence and the phy- 
sical laws of their own nature they may ; drink wine in bowls 
_ with their offspring, and be drunken they may; the battle is 
God’s ; and “ Wo to him that striveth with his Maker.” When he 
cometh in his wrath and his fury, “they shall not drink wine with 
a song, strong drink shall be bitter to them that drink it.” O 
ye wealthy families that are at ease in Zion, who drink wine in 
bowls and care not for the misery around you, God may bring 
you down wonderfully. A drunken husband and father here ; 
a vile and ruined son there; a daughter, tender and greatly 
beloved, coming home scathed and peeled from the cruelties of 
a drunken partner. Laugh you may, and jeer you may, and 
despise all God’s warnings and all the teachings of his provi- 
dence you may, but who can compass the bitterness that may 
overtake you? But “in that day shall the Lord of Hosts be for 
a crown of glory and a diadem of beauty unto the residue of his 
people, and for strength to them that turn the battle to the gate.” 

Never, no never, friends, was there such encouragement in 
this conflict as to-day. God, even our God, has come down, not 
in his wrath, but in his mercy, to soften, and melt, and turn 
the hearts of this great nation to himself; to convince all evil- 
workers of their evil doings ; to convert, we will hope, the distil - 
ler and the brewer, the vender and the consumer of strong 
drinks from all their hostility to themselves, to Him, and to their 
fellow immortals hastening to eternity. Never, no never, has 
the sun shone upon our land when it presented such a spectacle 
of moral grandeur as it does to-day. The temperance cause has 
done much to prepare the way of the Lord ; and now that God 
has so wonderfully revived religion in the nation, surely the 
temperance cause must follow in its wake, and soon witness 
blessed triumphs. Up, then, Oh, ye temperance warriors! 
buckle on your armor afresh, and march forward to the speedy 
and glorious termination of your conflict. 

1. Present yourselves a perfect example of entire abstinence 
from all intoxicating liquors as a beverage, in your persons, 
your families, your social pleasures, and in all the labors of life. 

2. Warn every man, and exhort every man against all such 
use as tends to ruin. In whatever company or condition you 
are, meekly, but boldly and unflinchingly, give battle to those — 


THE TEMPERANCE BATTLE. 23 


drinking usages which have dragged thousands and tens of 
thousands to the pit. 

3. Treat the traffic as the scourge of humanity ; the great 
instrument of Satan in destroying the peace and happiness of 
the world, and sending souls without number to destruction. 

4. Uphold and strengthen all legislation which shall protect 
the victim and not the criminal ; which shall suppress and pro- 
hibit the temptation, and let the tempted go free; which shall 
be on God’s side, and not on the side of the adversary. 

5. Go through all your towns and villages, and pledge 
again every man, woman, and child, not to touch, taste, or 
give the accursed thing; and especially go down among the 
rising generation, and train them all to an abhorrence of the 
cup. 

6. Sustain able lecturers in the field; scatter broadcast 
tracts and documents; and in all your organizations, and 
efforts be united, efficient, liberal, strong in faith, and of good 
courage. Look upward in every trial and under every diffi- 
culty. Be faithful to the end. This terrific scourge of earth 
shall be driven out. Help or no help from civil government, 
from politicians, from those who are at ease in Zion, it will be 
driven out. Do you ask for an assurance? You have it here, 
THE BATTLE IS NOT YOURS BUT GoD’s. 


Ohe Grue Action of Civil Gobernment, 


Appress or His Excenbency tur Governor or New HAmpsHire AT THE 
OPENING OF THE LEGISLATURE IN 1857. 


The Act for the suppression of intemperance is having a salutary effect. It 
is more fully regarded and practically sustained than any License Law ever had 
in the State. In many towns, the sale of intoxicating liquors is wholly aban- 
doned, and in ‘others, it is sold only, as other penal offences are committed, in 
secret. I am not aware that there is a city or town in the State where spirit- 
uous liquors are openly sold. ‘That there are places where the law is secretly 
violated, is not doubted, and the same may be said of every law, whether stat- 
ute.or common, from the highest to the lowest grades of offence. 

That the sale of spirituous liquors has greatly diminished since the Act took 
effect, is plainly visible ; and this fact is freely conceded by most candid men, 
whether they approve of its objects and provisions or not. Those engaged in 
the illegal trade, dare not expose it openly, but sell it in the darkness of mid- 
night. It is very evident to all, and it is next to an impossibility to be other- 
wise, that sales must be extremely limited in number and quantity where the 
traffic must be carried on in dark holes and loathsome dens, where men trem- 
blingly feel their way, and where the light of day is not admitted to witness 
the transaction, or countenance the offence. 

_ If there is to be any restraining law, any law to prevent unlimited sale, the . 

present law is as mild and ag liberal as an efficient law can be. ‘The license 
system has ever proved, ahd everywhere proves, only a special privilege to a 
favored few—an unlimited sale by a licensed class, a legalized method of en- 
couraging intemperance with all its train of acknowledged evils. 


Or THE GOVERNOR OF VERMONT TO THE LEGISLATURE OF 1856. 


_ My confidence in the power and duty of the Legislature to prohibit the traffic 
in intoxicating liquor as a beverage, remains unshaken. I deem the principle 
of Prohibition to be in perfect accordance with our Constitution, and in 
harmony with the obligations which the government owes to the people. Few 
if any, of the sources of evil have been so prolific of mischief, have sent forth 
so vast a desolation, and produced such overwhelming misery throughout all 
the departments of social and domestic life, as the sale of intoxicating liquors. 
The people have a right to demand, at the hands of their agents, protection 
from the evil, so destructive of the happiness and well-being of society. 

I conceive that the true interests of the State, and the hopes of the rising 
generation, require a Prohibitory Law, with ample powers effectually to enforce 
Its provisions, prescribing penalties commensurate with the offences it prohi- 
bits, and adapted to accomplish its great design, the extinguishment of the 
traffic. The constitutionality of several of the most important provisions of 
the present law of the State upon this subject, has been settled by the Supreme 


Court, a tribunal which has the just confidence of our citizens. 


Or Governor Wricur or Inprana vo THE LeGisLaTuRE oF 1856. 


Whatever difference of opinion may have been heretofore entertained on 
this subject, no man ean shut his eyes to the fact that, through our State, nume- 
rous places have been opened, or established, for the unrestrained sale of spirit- 
ous liquors, in which the young and unwary have been decoyed to contract 
tastes and habits which the resolves of a subsequent life cannot control, if 
they have not already entered upon the courses of dissipation and vice. 

It is imperatively the duty of the Legislature, in the exercise of a wise dis- 
cretion, to enact some constitutional law, in accordance with public sentiment, 
of sufficient stringency to restrain and suppress this growing evil. 


Ne 
vit 


‘ 
i 
ity 


tif 


hi Ie eb 
> 


a] 
ba A hei 
Ee i does 


